Isolated Incident
by Angel Gidget
Summary: An accident in Henry's lab forces Tessa and the others to make some adjustments. Jem/Tessa.


A/N: Written on plot-bunny urging from my friend Adria. Special thanks to my buddy Justine for her beta help. :)

* * *

He was composing in his head as the arrow struck center. Archery wasn't quite as uplifting as playing the violin, but it was an exercise that Jem finally felt well enough to practice for the first time in weeks, so he grinned as he nocked another arrow to the string, pulling it to the corner of his mouth.

Close to center. A good grouping, at least. He'd been at it for twenty minutes, and his arms had yet to ache.

The armory door burst open.

"Jem! Did you hear it?" Will stuck his head in the door, with a gasp of urgency.

Jem frowned.

He hadn't heard anything beyond the thick walls of the weapon's room.

"It sounded like an explosion in Henry's lab."

Jem rushed to the hall with his parabatai.

Normally, a bit of pyrotechnics from Henry's lab was usual and of no concern.

But today he had asked for assistance.

Today, Tessa was down there with him.

✿

"Merely a flash-bang, boys. Still trying to get a handle on a witch-light beacon. I simply blinked and the place was a tip. Though I'm afraid Tessa did take the brunt of it. I say, are you alright, Tessa?"

Will stepped over the shattered glass and pieces of bunsen burner. Tessa was on the ground, massaging her temple. Her dress was a dark ruin, black dust covering her neck and face. Her expression, however, was more annoyed than distressed. And though she winced at the tiny shard of glass in her arm, it seemed to be her greatest hurt.

Will sighed as he extended his hand.

Jem was behind him, only just caught up.

It was a pitiable and hopeless thing that drove Will to help Tessa to her feet before his parabatai could, but it was so small he did not stop himself. Though he did not try to meet her eyes.

"No harm done, Henry. I'll be fine."

Will sniffed, "No harm done exept for the burners. And the vials. And the lab. And her dress."

Tessa chuckled. "And the lights. We'll need those to navigate the mess."

Jem murmured, "But the lights are still on."

Tessa frowned.

Will felt his blood run cold.

He had been so busy avoiding her gaze, he had not noticed…

She could not meet his eyes at all.

✿

Sophie looked about the room one more time.

She prided herself on keeping the in-use rooms clean within the Institute, but for Tessa, she double-checked just to be sure everything was exactly where it should be.

Blind folk couldn't afford for things to be out of place.

Of course, nobody was actually using that word, but it hung in the air anyway. Like a gnat that folk tried to ignore, but couldn't avoid entirely.

Master Jem's voice floated over from the corner of the room, "Brother Enoch will be here soon. He'll be able to acess the damage. We can't assume anything."

He was kneeling in front of Tessa, her hand in his, and he looked at her steadily, though she could not do the same. Tessa sat like a stone, her expression blank and her back straight. A part of Sophie couldn't help but feel that it was entirely for their benefit.

Miss Gray had tried so hard to be friends with everyone when she first arrived at the London Institute. Sophie had let her in a little, but not fully. She regretted that a bit. The tables were turned now. Tessa hated to cry, and only those she trusted fully would ever see her do it.

But Jem would not be shut out. "Tessa—"

"It's as you said. We can't assume. We don't know that the prognosis will be good. And if it isn't, Jem—"

He gripped her hands tightly then, leaning in close.

Sophie tried to be invisible. She felt she already was.

"If it isn't, you will fight. You will learn how to live over again and you will do it well because no one has a stronger heart than you."

"But if I can't read, Jem…"

Her voice broke then, and he kissed her trembling knuckles.

"Then I will read to you. We all will. And we will find ways. There are schools now. Schools with books written in letters that—"

"James?"

Her voice had gone so quiet that Sophie could barely hear it, like a tiny crack growing on a frozen surface.

"Yes?"

"Are we alone?"

He looked up then, and Sophie nodded in understanding, stepping soundlessly to the door, closing it with the tiniest click.

It made all the difference and none.

She could still hear Tessa's burst of sobbing through the oak.

✿

Will watched it flow over her. Her eyes closed. Her head tilted back. Her throat made a swallowing motion, and her shoulders sagged.

Relief.

She exuded it, and Will felt it, along with Jem's exhale as the Silent Brother repeated the word in their minds once more.

_"… temporary. But she must be given time to heal: no less than three weeks without bright light exposure. I would recommend a blindfold to guard her eyes in the meantime."_

Charlotte nodded, "Yes. Of course. And thank you so much, Brother Enoch."

Henry wrung his hands with moisture in his eyes, "I think I can devise something. Some cotton pads on the cloth. Something to make it more comfortable…"

Tessa simply breathed. Slowly, clutching Jem's hand like a vice. Jem was smiling.

Will couldn't help himself.

"Well, Tess, it seems your entertainment will be entirely up to us for the next three weeks, and I know precisely where to start."

"I'm not interested in Lewis Caroll, Will."

"We shall start, of course, with Through the Looking Glass because it is superior to Wonderland in every way. But afterwards…"

"No."

"I assure you, you have not experienced his work properly without my dulcet tones to guide you."

Jem joined in, affecting the most ghastly Welsh accent Will had ever heard, "Twas brillig and the slithey toves did gire and gimble in the wabe…"

Tessa laughed, slapping his arm, "Oh, not you too, Jem!"

Will felt his heart constrict and release.

In the moment, it did not matter that she touched her fiancé so easily and that he, in turn, wrapped his arm around her shoulders.

It only mattered that she laughed.

✿

Tessa knew it was night.

She did not know it because the darkness of her world had somehow grown darker, or because she had some sort of clockwork inside her to intuitively inform her of the time.

She only knew it because Sophie had come to help her dress for bed an hour before, and the sound of crickets chirped through the cooled pane of her bedroom window, so loud that it competed with the ticking of her angel in her ears.

Tessa had never been afraid of the dark, necessarily. But she had never been forced to pay such attention to it before. From early childhood, she had gone to bed with candlelight behind her eyes, her mind rife with the adventures of Oliver Twist or the plight of Rip Van Winkle.

And now there was the dark. And the memories of sisters laughing, waiting to place a new object in her hand, beating her until she gave in, and let a magic she did not understand re-write her very self.

Tessa thought she might choke on it, if not for the music.

She could only hear it faintly, and it began in stops and starts.

Jem often did some practice exercises before he truly began to play.

But then play he did, and Tessa sighed.

It was comforting, truly, but she wanted more.

She wanted it loud, seering through her, driving out all sense of waiting and fear.  
What she really wanted was Jem.

She knew the way from the bed to her own door well enough. A straight line.  
And she had walked the path from her own room to his enough times in low light, if not the total lack of it.

It was strange being unable to look down the hall. If anyone saw her, she would not know. And it was stranger to realize that she had always thought of the way to Jem's room as a walk she could do with her eyes closed, though she had never before done so.

Her feet were cold on the floorboards. Her arms were cold. She had not wanted to search for her wrap or robe. So she came in nothing but her nightgown, tapping at his door. The music stopped.

"Tessa?"

His long fingers were warm on her arms, and as he drew her close, she could hear him closing the door behind them, could smell the yin fen, cedar, and string wax that mingled with his own singular scent, and could feel the warm puff of his breath against her neck as he held her.

"I hope you don't mind. I just wanted to hear you play. That theory of Will's—that my other senses are growing stronger—I think there may be something to it. The music—"

She flinched as she felt a feathery flick against her ankle. Jem released her.

"Church! C'mere, kitty."

Tessa walked forward as Jem let his feline companion out. Jem's bed was only a little to the left of where she thought it was, and she bit her lip before sitting down. She reminded herself once more that it was Jem and he would not mind. She pulled up the coverlets and wrapped them around herself.

It was the first time all night that she hadn't felt the cold.

She heard the padding of Jem's bare feet as he walked across what would have been her field of vision.

As the music began again, Tessa finally felt the truth of it.

It was night. And she was safe. The bed was warm.

Sleep was imminent.

✿

The intimacy of it struck him with a force and strength that left him wanting for words.

By all accounts of propriety, he should have carried her to her own room and her own bed, but he could not. A part of him insisted that Tessa should not wake in a place different from where she fell asleep. It was the same part of him that lead him to slip under the blankets with her; the part that glowed as she unknowingly wrapped her arms around him, sliding one leg in betwixt his own.

He had wanted this more nights than he could tell her.

He had wanted it since that first night they had tangled themselves in each other. All the following nights of being alone in his bed had felt chilled by comparison.

As she nestled into his side he heard her sleepily murmur, "Borogoves… outgrabe."

Jem held back the laughter so as not to wake her.

✿

On the fifth night of sneaking into Jem's bed, she awaked to a perception of brightness.

Tessa could swear that where once the black was pure black, there were now shades of red to it. She closed her eyes and it intensified. Light was entering her world again, though slowly.

She reached on the night-stand for Henry's blindfold. It was the first thing she touched. Jem had moved the box containing his drugs further back, to prevent her knocking it over.

There were small adjustments like that about the room.

Jem had moved Church's water bowl to the corner. He'd taken the one chair he kept in the room and shoved it to the wall.

For the first time in a week, Tessa felt her lips stretch into a smile that was simply happy. She reached with her other hand to the feeling of soft cotton with a warm strong back beneath it. She heard Jem sigh and stir.

"Good morning. Did you sleep well?"

There was a newfound cheeriness in his voice as well. He could see she had.  
Tessa splayed her fingers, allowing them to settle on his features. Jem stayed still for her, as he had at every point she had done this. Running her fingers over his eyebrow, his nose, his cheek, his lips.

"I never realized," she told him once, "how much I liked to simply observe things until the possibility of doing so left me. It may sound… silly, but I'm realizing how much I simply liked to look at people's faces and just _look_ and know where I stood with them."

She knew where she stood with Jem. His lip was upturned in a sleepy one-sided smile. His brow relaxed. His cheeks only slightly flushed, not overtaken with the fever.

Tessa leaned in.

"Do we have time?"

His voice fell, low and breathless, "Yes."

Where there had been air on her mouth before, there was then the soft skin of parting lips, followed by the tentative venturing of her own tongue.

Then she felt his hands. Finally, finally. The splay of four fingers still upon her hip, as the thumb swirled in gentle strokes.

Her feet slid the leg of his soft trousers upward, and Tessa wondered once more at the growing sensitivity of her own skin. She could feel the runes etched above his ankle. Speed. Endurance. She tightened her legs, drawing him closer, braced against her.

"Tessa—Nngh. Ah."

His own pelvic bone collided with hers, and perhaps the jarring nature of it should have hurt, but neither pulled away.

Somewhere along the line, their bodies had turned, no longer side-by-side. Jem was bracing himself above her, one hand clutching at the tangled mess that had become her hair.

She felt a tiny sliding sensation against her chest, and knew it to be the jade pendant Will had given Jem when they were children. Jem wore it beneath his clothes during the day, out of sight. But the more Tessa insinuated herself into Jem's private spaces, the more she became aware of the fact that he never took it off. He could no more part from it than she could her angel, and the feeling of the cool stone grazing her skin was becoming as familiar to her as Jem's voice in her ear, whisper-soft and sure.

_I love you, James_. She traced it into his back with her blunt nails, and breathed it into the kisses she distributed across his jaw.

There was an unspoken line drawn across the top of her thighs. It was the space where, if her nightgown rose above it, she tugged it down. It was the place where, if Jem's hands wondered above it, they slid around and held her from the back, never venturing forward.

Long, dexterous fingers stroked the line, tugging her gown back into place. But no sooner did the fabric cover her, then she felt his hand again, cupping her between her legs as if the material were not there. That, and a feather-light breath of air against her ear. Tessa went still.

"Shí Èr Yuè."

December.

It had seemed to just a little too soon a week ago. Now it was so far away. So terribly far. Tessa realized then that she was shaking, and the only reason she had not realized it before was because Jem was too.

She reached up to cup his face in her hands as she kissed him, fierce and frighteningly delicate like the pulse at his neck.

"When the time comes…" Tessa breathed.

"I'll want to see your eyes," Jem murmured.

"And I'll want to see you smile," Tessa grinned. "And you'll want to see the dress too. Charlotte plans to spare no expense."

"Well, I for one would not want to disappoint Charlotte."

"Meow."

Church's utterance of agreement from the floor set them laughing.  
Jem's hands took hers, and pulled her up from their world of blankets.  
The day was begun.

✿

Will double-checked and triple-checked the witchlight, making sure it remained low.

He watched Tessa step towards the general area where she clearly knew the chair should be. He watched her reach back.

Perhaps she had meant for her hand to land on his parabatai's shoulder. Slightly forward, but not improper. (Will knew these things. He never cared for himself, but he knew.)

But her hand landed on Jem's chest instead.

A small matter. Especially for shadowhunters, priding themselves on being much more casual than their mundane counterparts.

But Will could not miss it.

There was a propriety to the girl behind the scrawled letters. A sense that if her hand should touch a man so intimately before so many, an apology would be an order. A tiny "Oh." A light blush. An apologetic smile for being just a touch too forward.

But there was nothing. There was only Jem's hand guiding her elbow as she finally sat down. That same hand not quite leaving her, but instead sliding to that spot below the nape of her neck.

They touched the way lovers did, and only when the thought escaped fully, did Will tear his eyes away.

His heart flipped again and his head turned as the padded cloth came away and Tessa's gasp echoed through the room.

All jealousy, all pain, and all resignation fell by the wayside of delight as her words rang clear:

"I would like a book, please."

Will dashed for the Library doors and obeyed.

In that time, all was well.

F.I.N.


End file.
